AssocProf

I completely agree with Megan and others. You shouldn't feel any pressure at all to withdraw from any school until you're 100% certain you don't want to go there (and I agree - rank isn't everything - go to *all* the visits you can go to, even to the so-called "second-tier" schools). Of course, don't hold onto offers for the wrong reasons. That being said, you've earned every single offer that you've received. Take all the time to make the best decision for YOU. To those of you who've been making pleas on this board for people to withdraw quickly: You should be soundly chastised for doing so. For whatever reason, you didn't make the first cut. That means you're in a holding pattern until April 15th. That's just the way it is. One more thing... There are many misconceptions about how schools use their wait lists (this isn't surprising, given the unfortunate lack of transparency). Schools admit about 50% more people than they can reasonably matriculate. Therefore, a good number of people have to decline a school's offer of admission before the AdCom will move to the wait list. As suck, even if a handful of admits did, in fact, decline an offer quickly, schools would still be inclined to wait to closer to April 15 to pull people from their wait list (the danger of matriculating more people than you can afford to fund is greater than the danger of under-enrolling - schools are risk averse). Being on a wait list and feeling like your fate is in the hands of others sucks. I get that. But pressuring and guilting admits into thinking that they're ruining your chances (or making you wait longer than you want to wait) just isn't cool.

adblanche, You definitely shouldn't feel pressured by anyone to make a decision before you're absolutely ready to do so. There will be many, many pleas on this board by wait listed applicants for people to decline admissions offers quickly so they can get a spot. Feel free to ignore those pleas. Although I agree that people should decline when they are absolutely, positively certain they won't be going to a particular school, I can't imagine that anyone who has multiple offers from schools that they took the time to research ahead of time will be able to make a quick decision. And nobody should feel pressured to do so. I recognize that forums such as this one foster a community in which applicants can compare offers, seek advice, commiserate, and the like. These are all good things. But the negative side is that such forums increase the salience of the (incorrect) belief that any one person's decision is directly linked to the fate of another's. Adblanche, you've earned every great offer that you've received. Take the time to make the best decision you can for your career. If there's ever a time to be self-interested, this is it.

Hi all! I'm an Associate Professor at a top-20 R1. The single best piece of advice I can give you about how to approach your visit day (and how to approach the decision-making process more generally) is to NOT choose a program based on one professor with whom you want to work. Keep in mind that you're choosing a program, not a person. At most, you'll be lucky to take two classes with your POI. Most of your interactions outside of research (in classes you take, as a TA, on your qualifying exam committee, etc) will be with other profs. Obviously you should choose a program that's a good fit for your interests. And if there aren't any faculty who are doing research even remotely related to your interest then you shouldn't go to that program. But the worst thing you can do is to choose a program based on one person. Even if your POI says s/he doesn't have plans to retire or leave the Univ anytime soon, circumstances change (btw, I'm not certain you can ask the "retire" question without implying that you think the person is old). Your POI may very well leave or retire. Or you and s/he may not get along. Your best bet is to choose a *program* that will provide you with the best training based on your interests and career aspirations, so you're insulated if your POI leaves for another U, retires, is a jerk, goes into administration, or drastically changes his/her research agenda). What does this mean with regard to visit advice? You should meet with as many faculty members in your chosen field and related field(s) as possible during your visit. If you're asked who you'd like to meet with, provide a longish list. You can certainly rank them - people you'd most like to meet with, people you'd like to meet with, and people who it would be great to meet with if there's time. But don't just select your POI and one or two others. Make the most of the visit day to meet with many people. This goes for grad students as well - don't focus solely on your POIs advisees. You want to get a sense of the program as a whole, from a diverse cross-section of grad students.

The people on this board aren't going to be able to answer these questions, because none of them are currently getting their MA in Theory from NYU. If you want accurate answers to these questions, get in touch with the Pol. Sci. Director of Graduate Studies at NYU (or whomever runs the MA program) and ask for email addresses of some of the MA students so you can talk to them about the program. Then email each of the students and set up times to speak with each of them on the phone. Ask the same question to more than one person, so you can get a sense of whether there's consistency in the answers. Don't make such an important decision based on responses on this board.

Some schools interpret the April 15 deadline as meaning 5:00 pm local time, and others interpret it as meaning midnight on the 15th. You should check with individual schools to find out what their policy is. When I was Director of Graduate Studies, I called a waitlisted student on the phone at 8pm on April 15th to let her know that we were able to admit her. This meant, of course, that she didn't have much time to deliberate about a decision. I highly recommend that if any of you are waitlisted at a school that you might seriously consider, you should do all the same research on that school now as you've done with the schools that have admitted you (at a distance, of course, since you probably won't be visiting the schools at which you've been waitlisted). For example, you can make appointments to have phone conversations with faculty in your subfield, the DGS, and possibly a couple of current students. That way, if you get off the waitlist at the eleventh hour, you'll have all the info you need to make good decision. Regarding SOT's question about whether you can withdraw an acceptance after April 15: The Council of Graduate Schools has a resolution on this issue that most U.S. colleges and universities have signed on to. You can get the PDF of the resolution here: http://www.cgsnet.org/?tabid=201

CORRECTION: The notification deadline is April 15th, not April 16th (I'm not involved with grad admissions in my department this year, and I incorrectly assumed the deadline was on a Friday). I'm sorry for the confusion!

AllFiredUp - Politeness should have nothing to do with this decision. This is a decision about *your* life, and you worked extremely hard to get to the point at which you actually have a decision to make. Sure, once you get all your offers in writing and have visited every school and have carefully deliberated, if you don't think there's any additional information you could learn, you should go ahead and let schools know. I didn't say you should wait until the 16th just for the hell of it. I made two main points: 1) don't make a decision until you have everything in writing, and 2) don't feel pressured by anyone to make a decision prior to the agreed-upon deadline of the 16th. Troll - Of course I meant oral, but you know that. Sure, contracts law and Judge Judy tell us that oral contracts are binding. But once you get into this profession you'll learn that oral contracts (and even written contracts) to students and to new faculty sometimes have to be broken, with no malicious intent. Are any of you really going to sue a department for breaking an oral contract of admissions? This is all I'm going to say on this matter. I don't know any of you, and I don't really care whether you take my advice or not. It just bothers me to know that students are being made to feel that they should make a decision sooner than would be in their self-interest to do so (through pleas to common courtesy aimed at making someone feel guilty or through pressure from someone in power).

(I posted this in another thread, but I think it's important enough to start a new thread) Some advice from an Associate Professor: *None* of you should turn down *any* admissions offer until you have received the terms of *every* one of your offers *in writing*. I can't emphasize this enough. Even a verbal admissions offer of "full funding for 5 years" means absolutely nothing until you have it in writing. And there will be subtle differences in the written offers that you won't know about until you see them in writing (e.g., how much of the health care cost is the department picking up, or how much are the student fees that all are required to pay out of pocket). I know of cases in which verbal offers have been withdrawn because a department loses funding from the college or university that it was counting on to meet its funding commitments. When this happens, the first priority is to make sure funding commitments can be met to the students who are already in the program. Last people on the totem pole are newly admitted students who do not yet have a written offer. Some schools will try to pressure you to make an early decision -- you should firmly resist such pressure, as it violates the AAUP guidelines that virtually all U.S. universities have agreed to abide by. You have until April 16. Period. Unfortunately, what this means for waitlisted students is that many of them won't get final word until late in the day on the 16th. If you're on a waitlist, you shouldn't expect to hear anything before that time. And if you really want to attend that school, then you need to wait to give a final decision to the schools at which you have been accepted until very late on the 16th (which means that people on that waitlist won't hear until very late in the day). This is, of course, an unfortunate cycle. But one that none of you has any personal incentive to try to break. There's absolutely no rush to make a decision before the April 16th deadline. This is an incredibly important decision. April 16th is only a month away. Take every second of the allotted time to make the best decision for *you.* You are not being selfish if you do this. You are being thoughtful and rational. This is all coming from someone who has made multiple phone calls late in the evening on the last day (9pm, 10pm) to waitlisted applicants letting them know that we are finally(!) able to accept them. And on more than one occasion, the student has told me that he/she has regretted not waiting until the last minute to make a decision. Don't let that be you. *You'll need to confirm for each school whether they interpret "end of the day on the 16th" as close of business, or midnight.*

(moved post to a new thread)